Mystery Mastery: Brigid, Who's Read Some Abilities

Welcome back to Mystery Mastery, where we try brewing decks with the most mysterious Commanders around: the Mystery Booster legendaries. I have a deep love of these Test Cards: I think they're the best version of Un-set cards Wizards has ever put out, and I'm always excited to see new ones.

Now that folks have gotten their hands on Mystery Booster 2, we get to see a bunch of unusual and wild designs for cards, especially the handful of legendary creatures in the set. If you're lucky enough to get some and have a play group that lets you use them, then this article series is for you.

Today's deck brings back an old legendary creature and an old kindred group who I both have a deep affection for: Brigid Baeli and the residents of Kinsbaile, the Kithkin. In Mystery Booster 2, we got to see a Brigid who's seen a lot, specifically Brigid, Who's Seen Some Stuff.

She's apparently seen a lot of keywords printed on cards, and thanks to her thoughtweft ability she's gonna share those experiences with her family and some newly disguised friends. Building this deck is very similar to building Odric, Lunarch Marshal, with some important drawbacks. While Brigid cares only about giving Kithkin abilities, she uses every single keyword ability, not just the paltry list Odric has access to. Unfortunately, as we'll find out later, she can only use very specific keywords. Still, want a way to give your entire team annihilator 1, hexproof, and flanking? Then follow along as I describe what this unreal Commander can do.

Wait, What's Outlast Again?

First let's talk about the ability toolbox Brigid gets to work with. There are a handful of abilities I can't or won't put onto my Kithkin for various reasons: some, like ingest, have no white-identity cards with it, while landwalk and skulk are lesser, redundant forms of evasion when flying, protection, and Brigid's own "nimble" exist. Then there's a few abilities, like phasing, which just suck. That brings us to 28 different abilities in the deck and luckily I was able to get some of my favorite keywords, like annihilator, to make my team make you sacrifice your stuff, battle cry to have my whole team buff my whole team, and rampage, to remind others that rampage exists.

Here's some background for the next part: I was on a roll making this deck, adding as many things that give strange abilities as I could (do you know there's an Aura that gives horsemanship?). The roughest bit of constructing this deck was mid-way through research when I remembered the age-old adage: reading the f@#&ing card. Brigid's thoughtweft ability only distributes printed abilities to your Kithkin, meaning any modifications like Auras, Equipment, and counters that add abilities do not apply. Though it made me cut half of the deck I'd been working on up to that point, it allowed me to find a couple of creatures I can use to "cheat" that rule.

Making Fake Kithkin

What I mean by cheats is cards like Konda, Lord of Eiganjo. Currently his last ability is errata'd to just be "indestructible". That word isn't printed on the card; the ability says "indestructible" and not the actual key word. But, technically it was printed with the word "indestructible", so I'm counting it for thoughtweft (if Lord Kondo becomes a Kithkin). A trickier situation that still works is Steel Seraph. The robotic angel can give various keywords to target creature, but since it can target itself, and it's printed with the abilities it gives through targeting, Steel Seraph can "turn on" one of its printed abilities per combat and give it to your team (if the Seraph is a Kithkin.)

Everybody Get In Here

To avoid reusing that Kithkin parenthetical again, how are we gonna make all these keyword-soup creatures into Kithkin? Good old fashioned identity theft! Our all-star is of course Maskwood Nexus, the kindred artifact of choice when you need to make all non-Kithkin into Kithkin, and Mirror Entity, who just wants everyone to be like it, which isn't weird at all. Sure, I've included the best mono-white Kithkin, but until we have a Kithkin printed with annihilator 2, we need a few more options to get our creatures covered in abilities. We also have a few Equipment to assist if Nexus or Entity aren't on the field; slap an Amorphous Axe onto Zetalpa and cackle at the new suite of abilities your entire team has.

Now that we've given our creatures fake IDs, it's time to sneak them into the party we're having on the battlefield. Belbe's Portal, Quicksilver Amulet, and Cryptic Gateway can all cheat our big nonsense creatures into play, giving us the chance to play multiple keyword-heavy creatures per turn to staple new words onto our Kithkin and making complicated combats even more complicated. Enlightened Tutor can grab any of these, and our smaller toolbox creatures can be grabbed with Kithkin Harbinger and Recruiter of the Guard.

Make It A Reality

But what if you want to play this deck without Brigid? Luckily the deck includes two perfectly suitable ability-granters, Odric and Akroma, Vision of Ixidor, plus an enchantment that also does the trick, Concerted Effort. These are not really "Brigid at home", but more multiverse clones: though they give fewer abilities, you don't have you use printed abilities and can fill the deck with Auras and Equipment. Though you're stuck in one color, there's a lot of room to mess with any of the "real" and "uncool" versions of Brigid if you make this yourself.